Easton Wants to Revitalize With Tax Assistance

Approving a Keystone Opportunity Zone (KOZ) and a Local Economic Revitalization Tax Assistance (LERTA) area within Easton is a financially good move for both the city and the Easton Area School District, officials said at Tuesday night's city council committee meeting.

Easton will pitch its plan to the school board at its next finance committee meeting on April 10 and to the full board on April 17, said Easton Director Gretchen Longenbach.

Proposed for the KOZ are a total of six potential redevelopment sites:

• The on South 13th Street,
• The on Northampton Street,
• The former site in Southside,
• The planned on South Third Street
• The county-owned
• The buildings in the that were officially declared blighted last year.

The designation would last for 10 years, starting at the beginning of 2013, and ending in 2022. KOZ properties would be eligible for tax abatements until the term runs out.

However, unlike past KOZs, the tax abatement isn't automatic. To qualify, KOZ sites would have to apply annually for the break, and they must be occupied and fully code compliant, Longenbach said.

Since even the properties that are in the works for redevelopment will take a couple of years at minimum to meet those requirements, none will get a full 10 year break anyway, she added.

Redevelopment will raise the assessed values and those properties' taxes with them in the long term, with the potential gain for taxing entities in the long term being millions of dollars, according to the city's estimates.

Most of redeveloped properties are commercial sites, city officials added, not residential, so their wouldn't be an increase in students.

The earliest any of the chosen sites would qualify for the break is 2014, said Mayor Sal Panto.

"We're not getting the full 10 years out of any of them," he said, estimating most would probably get a 6- to 7-year break.

The city already has the support of the county, the only other involved taxing body. For a KOZ to be granted, all the involved taxing bodies must approve it.

The city also hopes the school district will approve a LERTA as well, which would provide staggered tax abatements for redeveloped and improved properties, including some new construction, within designated zones in the city.

Proposed LERTA designation areas would include 44 owner-occupied homes in , most of Downtown, sections of the West Ward extending as far west as 12th Street, and four sites in Southside.

A staggered abatement in 10 percent increments would be granted to qualifying properties over a ten year period.

"The whole LERTA thing is really important to ," Panto said, adding that otherwise qualified buyers are being denied mortgages by banks over the taxes, and none of the owner-occupied houses have been sold yet.

"Low-moderate income folks become 'not bankable' when the higher assessed figure hits,” Panto said. “Having taxes go up slowly will help them cope.”

Though the homes are designed for families, the creation of the new lower-density blocks, resulted in a net loss of about 200 Easton Area students from the neighborhood, not more. Since the former neighborhood was government-owned and therefore tax-exempt anyway, the addition of any taxable parcels is a net gain, he added.

"We're in this together anyway," Panto said. "We need to sink or swim together. We have the same financial difficulty they do."